a record of the life and times here at the phillips pottery in abilene, texas.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Firing X.

I fired off the wood kiln yesterday, it was a bit of a fiasco. Not the firing itself but the events surrounding the firing.

Back stack of the chamber.

Front stack.

Firewood.

Pre-heating.

Michael Kline assisted me with some carb and sodium intake during the firing.

It started raining about halfway through the firing, no big deal I can deal with a little rain. Then it started pouring...then it started hailing...then it started really hailing. This guy landed right outside the door but was by no means the biggest that I saw.

The yard after a couple minutes. This continued off and on for 3 hours. The barn where the kiln is located is clad in nothing but corrugated steel. It's hard to adequately describe the sound of giant hail hitting a corrugated roof. I think the closest description is 30 kids banging pots and pans together right next to your head for about 3 hours. It just about drove me mad, a pretty miserable experience.

I don't really like to fire in the rain or during overcast days because the smoke and salt fog don't dissipate...but I have never seen it do anything like this. The fog was so dense here you can't even see the showroom. It travelled to the street and cars had to slow down to drive through it. After the firing was over there was still a haze in the park across the street. The fire dept showed up but immediately turned around when they saw that it was just me firing. Because of the lingering smoke and fog we had a multitude of people pull into our driveway and want to help "put the fire out." The fire dept also received a number of calls...I expect a visit from the fire marshal again soon. Dealing with the weather, the smoke, and the good samaritans didn't allow me the necessary focus on the firing. It got to temp just fine so lets hope that all is well. Only a 30% chance of rain the last 4 days... and it picked the small window of time during my firing.